Mother's Day

I had a terrific Mother's Day on Sunday!  I woke up around 7 when Drew brought Chase in to see me.  I almost had to instantly pop out of bed to see part one of my gift - a clean kitchen, living room, and hearth room!  See, I had to get out of bed to see it ASAP because Chase already had eyes on it.  He can't stand seeing things in a proper place! :)

My big Mother's Day gift was my Kindle!  I've been pining for one of these for about 5 months now, after I rediscovered reading during my Christmas break and after a good 10 year break from "required" reading in high school and college.  I instantly purchased the new Tina Fey book, which 50+ pages into it is pretty hilarious!

Anyways, our first stop that morning was to Drew's parents house for brunch #1 and then our second stop was to the Spring Creek Ranch for brunch #2.  Chase had fun playing with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for a good part of the day!

One of my favorite moments of the day though was after brunch #2 when we were at Sherrie's house and Grayson, who is supposed to be napping upstairs, shouts from his crib, "Happy Mother's Day!".  So sweet!!

Although my Kindle is pretty cool, just being Chase's mom is the best gift. 

Phone Pics

Drew and I have collected various pictures of Chase with our phones this week.  Since I'm only with Chase in the morning, and Drew is with him in the afternoon, these pictures help the other see what they are missing out on.

This first picture helps show a new phase Chase is entering into.  A phase where his favorite direction is "upside down".  Drew's message is on the left, and mine is on the right.

In the first picture, he dumped the remaining goldfish crackers out on the floor in front of him and then instead of eating them, just swirled them all around with his hands.  In the second picture, he reached up and grabbed my coin sorter and turned it upside down and there were pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters EVERYWHERE.  I still find them occassionally in our bathroom and bedroom!

I love he has the same expression on his face in both pictures.

Both of next pictures are from today.

This morning as we were getting ready, he started pulling all of his overnight diapers out of his basket.  With each one he pulled out, he said "Elmo", regardless of whether it had a picture of Elmo or not.

Here's the backstory - Chase has been saying Elmo a ton over the past week.  We first noticed him saying it when he is looking at his unused diapers.  When I show him a real Elmo, he acts like he doesn't care.  I've concluded that they must say and show him Elmo when he gets his diaper changed at school.

As I was pointing out and saying "Cookie Monster" on his diapers, he would repeat back "Elmo".

The aftermath.

On certain days when Drew has graduate school classes, I pick Chase up.  When I do this, I also have to think of dinner...which is not my strong suit.

Tonight, he had chicken bites (similar to a chicken "crab cake") topped with garlic hummus and a wheat thin.  He loved it!

Sunday's Dinner

I just remembered I had these pictures on my camera from Sunday.  When I saw what was occurring during dinnertime, I had to take a couple of pictures!

As I was uploading and editing my pictures, I played around with some black and whites and thought this black and white was really cool!  You can see all the tomato sauce!

 Unfortunately for Chase, he already had a bath that afternoon and was really upset when we took him to the bathroom to wash up after dinner, but didn't put him in the bath!

Random

Sometimes Drew and I watch Chase and then spontaneously exclaim to each other how much we love him and how we just think he is the most adorable thing ever.  We do this multiple times a day.  It's almost involuntary.  I wonder if we will ever quit doing that? 

I sure hope not.

19 months!

Yesterday Chase turned 19 months old!  When I came home from work, I had the world's worst headache so I made Drew take a monthly picture.

They turned out lovely!  Ha!

19 Month Stats:


Unofficial weight: 30.5 lbs
Clothing size: 18-24 month and 2T sizes.  We still fit him in his 18 month size jammies.
Shoe size: same shoes as last month. Last month I said his foot was the size of my iPhone.  Now, he's about a half a big toe longer than my iPhone!  I bought his Easter shoes in a size 7 thinking they would be huge and he could wear them all summer.  They fit like a glove!
Diaper size: Size 4; but I just bought a package of size 5's for his overnight diaper!
Favorite toy: He likes looking at his various books and his books that sing songs.  He likes to empty out his big toy bucket and then put everything back in the bucket...and then do it all over again!
Favorite foods: He still loves the same old stuff.  We figured out he doesn't really like juice...he'll favor water if we give him an option.  Milk trumps both though.  He went crazy for mashed potatoes at Easter.  He would live on Sister Schubert rolls if we let him.
Least favorite foods: Green beans.  He feeds those to Weezie.
Words: No new super clear words.  When we asking him to say things, he'll mimic the initial sound, like a Wuh or a Shu, but nothing clear.  I thought he said a very unclear "I love you" yesterday after I said it over and over again, but I could have just been wanting to hear it! :)
Teeth: No new teeth.
Daily Routine: I don't know if I've done this in a while.  Chase wakes up around 6:30 each morning.  He'll drink a cup of milk while watching TV or roaming around the bathroom while I get ready.  After I get him dressed, I give him another small snack while I load up the car.  We then head to school.  We usually get there around 8 or so, but sometimes it varies a lot!  At school, he takes a nap from around 12 to 2.  We're also down to one nap a day at home, which can be nice when he takes a long nap, but can be bad if he decides to capnap in the car for 15 minutes and then he refuses to sleep the rest of the day!  Chase gets picked up at school around 5 each day by either me or Drew (mostly Drew) depending on each other's schedules.  Dinner at 5:30 or 6.  I'm usually home by 6 or 6:30.  TV and running around the house time until 7:30 and then bedtime with a cup of milk, sleepsack, sleep sheep, and Scout (it's very much a routine).  Bedtime has been a little challenging lately as he's sometimes been waking up around 11pm and just screaming.  Or he'll wake up and want to party for about 2 hours.  If that's the case, he comes into the big bed with me and Drew goes upstairs.  Not ideal, but we all get some sleep!

Other stuff he's up to:

• My favorite new thing is that he will give little hugs and kisses.  He's a little stingy with them, but when he gives them they are awesome.  Initially, he was giving big open mouth kisses, but now he closes his lips and plants one right on your lips!  :)  You have to watch out though, because sometimes he will bite you on the mouth!
• There is one word that the daycare teachers always say when we pick him up in the afternoons.  They always describe him as "goofy".  He's always making them laugh, like he does us!
• I oftentimes put his snacks in a little plastic drinking cup.  He now likes to try to "drink" his snacks.  He lifts the cup like he's drinking and then eats the snack out of the cup.  My favorite moment was when we had a tornado warning go off this past week.  We were in the bathtub together and he had a cup of Kix cereal.  He lifted the cup up, ate some Kix, and when he lowered the cup he had like 5 Kix "balls" stuck to his lips.  So cute!
• He laughs and laughs when you tell Weezie "no, no".
• His middle name must be Danger!  Several months ago he started to love to climb.  Lately though, he wants to climb window sills, dressers, and bookcases.  He also wants to dive off the sides and backs of sofas.  Oh dear!
• He's a little dancer!  The way he dances is he twists his body just a little bit back and forth, but he'll also shake his head like he's saying "no" over and over again.  Anytime you play a song he kind of likes on the iPod or one of his toys, he'll do this.  I also noticed one day when in the car that when I sing the alphabet song (the only song I know apparently) he waves his arms out in front of him!  I would love to be a fly on the wall at school and see why he does that!
• Chase can run!  We love the sounds of his little footsteps as he plods across the house!

Easter Pictures

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter greetings from us to you!

Spring Pictures in the Park

I wanted to take some spring pictures this afternoon.  I had such high hopes for posed pictures with flowers or in a wide open field of grass with Chase standing still and looking at the camera.

Well, that didn't happen. 

But, I captured some cute stuff anyway.

Bunny Stalker

So my last post said that I was creeped out by big bunnies.  Well, Chase is fascinated with them.  He keeps his distance, but he is fascinated none the less.  The Easter bunny visited our church's Easter egg hunt this morning.  Bunny stopped by our table during the prayer and that's where Chase's fascination began.  After Bunny walked away, Chase was on a mission to find Bunny and stare at him.  After the hunt, Bunny came back to visit with the little kids.  Chase just stared at him open mouthed while either gripping on to Daddy or hiding behind corners.

(Sorry the pictures are fuzzy...I couldn't figure out how to get my flash to pop up...blurg.)

This egg hunt wasn't quite as successful for Chase as last week.  I think Chase didn't understand the concept of hunting eggs indoors.  He was more interested in looking in other kids' baskets, peeking in doorways, and running away with his chosen egg while ignoring all the other eggs on the ground!

We had the grandmas stop by to watch Chase's egg hunt. 

In addition to fuzzy pictures, I was plagued by being unable to get a good posed picture all day.  Here were my best attempts at getting Chase and Walter together.

Practice Made Perfect!

Chase took part in his first "official" Easter egg hunt this morning.  I was constantly debating between the Bartlett hunt or the Germantown hunt.  I ended up choosing the Germantown one because they advertised they had age specific hunts, although I should have guessed that Bartlett had the same thing.  We'll try out Bartlett next year! Can you tell I have major guilt for dissing my own city's egg hunt!!??  I totally do!

The weather this morning was totally nothing like you would expect for an egg hunt.  48 degrees with 15mph winds!  Brrrr!  But we bundled up and made the best of it!

Most of the activities they had at the Germantown Festival were for kids older than Chase, so we parked and went straight for the egg hunt which started at 10:30 for the 2 and under crowd.  As we got onto the baseball field where they had all the eggs and more people started getting in place, we looked around and noticed tons of kids who were older than 2!  I was getting a little nervous at that point.  I even had some of our own eggs in my diaper bag just in case Chase didn't get anything! :) 

After they let us go, lots of the older kids ran towards the back fence scooping up eggs along the way.  Luckily, those kids left a little trail of unclaimed eggs along the way!  It's funny because I don't think we went much farther than 6 feet from where we started...we didn't cover much territory in this hunt!  Chase picked up 19 eggs and by the time he picked up his last egg, we looked around and the ball field was pretty much empty!  Some kids had like 5 gallon sized easter baskets overflowing with eggs!!  Those must have been really advanced "2" year olds! :)  The sad part was he was really getting into the hang of it towards the end!  We dumped out his basket when the field emptied and let him pick up his eggs again!

After the hunt, we stopped by the little petting zoo they had.  He got to pet a chinchilla, look at some baby chicks, and look at some goats (MY FAVORITE!!), a llama, and some sheep.

We did not stop by to visit the Easter bunny...because I think big bunnies are creepy.

Worn out!  After a 3 hour nap, he woke up and still loves his eggs!  He likes to dump them all in his lap and just touch all of them!  I have a feeling we'll be playing Easter egg hunts all month long!

Scary things!

Chase loves anything with a screen.  TVs (obviously).  Laptops.  iPhones.

Funny thing is, both times I've actually seen him scared, it's because of things he's seen on TV.

The first time we noticed him scared was when we were watching one of his favorite shows (Fresh Beats).  They had an episode where there was a slow motion scene which ended up with someone getting a cream pie in the face.  I'm not sure what he saw or what he thinks he saw, but he cried each time he saw that scene for at least the first 5 times he watched it on different occasions.  We didn't quite figure out that the scene was causing him to cry until the second or third time he watched it.

Then yesterday, he was upstairs and playing with the buttons on the TV you see below.  He turned the TV on, but of course didn't turn the converter box on.  After he turned it on, I saw him sit back with the biggest smile on his face.  As the TV powered up, you could tell it was the fuzzy channel you get that makes the awful noise when there are no inputs.  I was watching Chase's face as the TV came on and it went from a look of pure joy is a look of pure terror!  It was so sad!  He started crawling away from the TV as fast as he could!  I don't blame him though.  That noise is awful!  You would think that someone could improve that in modern times!